West indies-A tour of India!!

Not been mentioned around here so i thought i'd start a thread. Right now the West Indies A-team is currently in a tour against India-A. The first part of the tour which was a three match ODI series has just been concluded and West Indies-A won it 2-1.

The first game was won mainly due to a brilliant knock by Singh who got 123 runs and pushed the India score above 300. Although it has to be said the West Indies bowling left a LOT to be desired and perhaps that was to be expected as it was the first game of the tour.

In the second game WI made changes and brought in Carter and Johnson and it worked a treat as Carter hit a stunning ton and Johnson chipped in two with a quick 37 to help the team reach 279. Judging by the performance from the WI bowlers in the previous game many thought India would have no problem chancing that score but it wasn't to be as WI bowled extremely well and got the two main wickets of Singh and Pathan in one over to pile the pressure on India!!..they didn't recover from that.

And lastly in the third and final game WI were once again sent in to bat and it proved to be a costly decision by Singh as WI started like a house on fire!!..Powell got a quick 40 and was supported by Fletcher!!..which meant for the first time in the series the openers had a good start. Then up stepped experience WI batsman Kirk Edwards to really power home the advantage and got himself a ton!!..the score in the end was 312 and though India started the chace well once Singh and the young opener went it was virtually all over. It certainly surprised me considering India-A had just beaten NZ-A 3-0 in an ODI series and had been well in their groove by the time they faced WI.

A star for WI in the bowling department was most certainly Migual Cummins!!...a young barbados pacer who is really starting to look the part after having a breakthrough season in the last domestic four day competition. His pace, nagging line and ability to move the ball was causing all sorts of problems and he ended up with seven wickets in the three games.

Tomorrow there's a single T20 game and then we move on to three 4-day games which should be very interesting indeed. The last time the team teams played was in the Caribbean in a series where India-A had the likes of Dhawan, Pujura, Rohit Sharma, Kumar, Mukund, Rahayn etc!!..and WI won the series 2-1.

From our point of view it was a total non event. Poor bowling just gave India the perfect platform to build a big score and even when we tightened things through the middle overs thanks largely to the two spinners Nurse and Permaul their efforts were washed away by terrible overs from the other bowlers down the stretch.

Not surprised by the result though because in all honesty our coaches have pretty much just picked the one day team who have players like Powell, Edwards, Miller, Carter etc who just aren't t20 players!!..

Anyway the four day matches start on Wednesday and that should really be a cracker!!..

I was reading an article the other day that mentioned one of the one-dayers got a crowd of over 10,000. That's a massive effort. I hate the BCCI just as much as the next guy, probably more, but if someone has to hold the power position in cricket then it's hard to argue against it being India when they can draw that sort of crowd to a random List A game between their A side and West Indies A.